Talk session: Train your data!

Posted on August 29, 2014 by Mary Alexander

Create and organize your or your class research data to share with others or provide a foundation for visualizations and other dh projects.  Metadata records are surrogates of text, images, notated music, audio files and more!  Enhance text by producing digital editions that represent authentic texts or provide commentary, interpretation, or highlight important themes.  Tried and true metadata schemas and metadata related standards will be discussed.  Learn what to do if you can’t find a metadata schema or controlled vocabulary that meets your needs. Discussions may be illustrated with dh projects.  Bring your metadata questions!

Metadata librarians and dh consultants from the University of Alabama Libraries (Mary Alexander, Vanessa Unkeless, and Todd Wallwork) welcome the opportunity to talk to you.

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Talk Session: The Creative and Interpretive Potential of Digital Mapping

Posted on August 29, 2014 by Pearce Durst

I would like to lead a discussion on why we use digital maps. I will share some of the ways that I am using maps in my research, specifically by creating a collaborative and interactive activity that employs Google Maps to augment and mediate our experience at THATcamp on the UAB campus.

As teachers and researchers, I want to discuss the affordances and constraints of map assignments. Have you tried group work, collaborative, or “crowd-sourcing” activities with students? If so, please share your tips and tricks. I envision this session as one in which we share examples, questions, and possible uses of digital maps and mapping tools. Since pedagogy should drive the use of technology, greater emphasis is given to “why” we might use maps than “how” to map complex data sets.

I’d love to hear from anyone interested in the technical and interpretative potential of mapping personal, literary, or historical spaces.

Categories: Collaboration, Mapping, Session Proposals, Session: Talk, Teaching, Visualization | Comments Off on Talk Session: The Creative and Interpretive Potential of Digital Mapping

Crash Course in Python

Posted on August 28, 2014 by Holland Hopson

I’d love a crash course in Python. Many of my students seem more likely to have Python skills than other programming language skills. Too bad I don’t! Time to fix this problem. Let’s hack at Python together and try to come up with 3 cool digital humanities coding examples for the complete Python newbie.

Categories: Coding, Collaboration, Data Mining, Digital Literacy, Session Proposals, Session: Play, Text Mining, Visualization | Comments Off on Crash Course in Python

Makerspaces

Posted on August 28, 2014 by Holland Hopson

I’d like to propose a talk session about makerspaces on our campuses and in our communities. I’m part of a group working to establish a makerspace on the UA Tuscaloosa campus. I’ll share information about our project and would love to hear from others about how we can work together more effectively.

Categories: Coding, Collaboration, Digital Literacy, Libraries, Project Management, Session Proposals, Session: Talk | Comments Off on Makerspaces

Proposal for Talk Session: Where does Alabama stand in digital education?

Posted on August 27, 2014 by Wade Kwon

Wade Kwon

Alabama has great potential when it comes to education, but lags behind other states in execution and results. What should we do right now to improve digital access to classes and instructors? What should we stop doing?

Consultant Wade Kwon leads the discussion that will generate ideas, debate and questions for our future. Join in and help to build the state’s educational roadmap.

  • What digital resources do educators have to reach more students?
  • What areas should policy makers focus on in the next 3 years to improve digital outreach?
  • What types of professional development are needed to help educators with digital learning?
  • What are the most effective digital education programs in other states?
  • What should Alabama stop doing in digital education?
Categories: Digital Literacy, Open Access, Session Proposals, Session: Talk, Teaching | Tags: , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Proposal for Talk Session: Where does Alabama stand in digital education?

A New Tool for Teaching with Video Multimedia

Posted on August 27, 2014 by Scott Brande

Evolving “best practices” for classroom teaching emphasize engaging students, including cognitive breaks, and guiding interactive responses and peer discussion. Video can be a powerful driving for student learning. We (Brande and Arslan) have developed for our teaching, EZSnips, an online tool to be used with YouTube.

Although we developed EZsnips as a tool for use in Brande’s UAB Earth Science course, we believe the model we have developed and template for deployment is general to academic disciplines overall, and is just as suitable for a course in the humanities as it is in the sciences.

A teacher can, with EZsnips,

  • “snip” a YouTube video without video editing software to create an arbitrary segment for later play
  • input and store relevant metadata for later retrieval of the snip from a private, shared, or public video repository
  • create a web link for each snip that will play the video segment from PowerPoint or any web compatible environment.

In this workshop, lead by Brande, we propose to hit all four marks – Talk, Make, Teach, Play.

Talk – Brande will demonstrate the power and functionality of EZsnips when used in combination with YouTube. Free trial accounts will be provided for immediate access by attendees.

Teach – Brande will also demonstrate how he uses Bloom’s Taxonomy to create a “video tutorial” to accompany video viewing, thus transforming a passive viewing experience into a guided, active one that initiates student written responses and peer group discussion. 

Make/Play – By the end of the workshop, attendees will have

  • searched and located a few videos on YouTube that are pedagogically relevant to their course(s)
  • created a number of snips and associated metadata within EZsnips
  • become familiar with the EZsnips user interface for viewing, filtering, and retrieving snips
  • deployed EZsnips links from within PowerPoint and web browsers
  • created at least one video tutorial based on Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Some of the detailed information about EZsnips to be presented during the workshop may be viewed from the Squarespace landing page here.

www.ezsnips.squarespace.com

EZsnips, the tool, and its public library of snips, may be viewed here.

www.ezsnips.com

Categories: Session Proposals, Session: Make, Session: Play, Session: Talk, Session: Teach | Comments Off on A New Tool for Teaching with Video Multimedia

Proposal for Talk Session: Taking Digital Humanities Projects to ‘Live Publics’

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Alex Beringer

Digital Humanities projects provide an array of new ways for students to present their work to “live publics” who will read and experience it firsthand. Web design platforms like Wix, Squarespace, and WordPress make it exceedingly easy to broadcast student projects to the university community or even the general public via email. Likewise, imaging programs like Photoshop and GIMP provide improved polish for physical and virtual displays. For example, in my own teaching I have worked with students to create websites and an annual museum-style exhibit (see my website for examples www.alexjberinger.com/#!student-projects/chlk).

These living, breathing publics are substantially different than the speculative publics of traditional papers, which typically address the narrow audience of a professor or a yet-unrealized future audience. For this session, I would like to invite discussion about the diverse issues of working with students on projects that go out to broad live publics.

Many of the questions we will address are practical: How to select a platform and/or software for going public? How to structure assignments to ensure a high level of quality (and thus transmit a final product that students will feel comfortable presenting to live publics)? How does the act of putting work online or in physical installations create incentives and pressures that change the way that our students approach their work?

Other questions will be more theoretical: How might addressing a live public affect a student’s sense of agency as he/she transitions into future professional and social situations? How does a “live public” affect a student’s ability to experiment and thus find his/her own voice? Do students need to be protected from the (potentially harsh) judgments of live publics? If so, how does an instructor determine what constitutes a reasonable level of editing or revision requests in student work?

Since this is such a broad subject—and one where the notion of “expertise” seems ambiguous at best—I would eagerly invite others who have worked with live publics to partner with me on this session.

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Campus Collaborations in Digital Humanities (Talk Session)

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Heather Martin

Faculty have been using technology in humanities teaching and scholarship long before the “digital humanities” became ubiquitous. However, at many universities, faculty and staff work on digital humanities projects in silos. People in these silos have ideas, expertise, and resources that would benefit faculty, staff, and students campus-wide. Inspired by the report Sustaining the Digital Humanities Host Institution Support Beyond the Start-up Phase (from Ithaka S+R), I’d like to discuss ways to bring these silos together and/or give individuals at institutions without digital humanities centers ideas for collaborating with others on their campuses.

Bring your questions and share your experiences related to campus collaborations in digital humanities. Here are a few questions to get us started:

  • In which units on your campus are faculty and staff building digital humanities projects, or, more broadly, incorporating technology into teaching and research?
  • Lacking a formal digital humanities center, how can an institution support digital humanities projects?
  • What are the opportunities for collaborating with community groups outside the institution?
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Registration is open for THATCamp Alabama 2014!

Posted on June 16, 2014 by Heather Martin

Registration is open for THATCamp Alabama 2014, scheduled for September 5-6 at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Head over to our Register page to sign up. The event is free, but space is limited.

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Save the date!

Posted on September 27, 2012 by Heather Martin

THATCamp Alabama is scheduled for September 5-6, 2014 at the University of Alabama at Birmingham! The details will be published here soon. Meanwhile, read more about the THATCamp movement and browse other THATCamps at thatcamp.org.

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